The drum & bass veteran talks about bass music eras, dance culture in America and his new album, Contact.
British artist Nicolaas Douwma, AKA Sub Focus, has been steadily putting out big-room drum & bass since the early 2000s. In more recent years, he's become staggeringly popular, releasing a string of Top 40 UK pop hits that have made him synonymous with a more mainstream sound. His influence looms large across a whole generation of young producers, particularly in the US.
In this Exchange, Douwma sits down with Resident Advisor editor Gabe Szatan at the beautiful Red Rocks Amphitheater in Colorado. They speak about how he hit number one in the US dance music charts last year, as well as how drum & bass moved from being popular with a "secret clique of people" to becoming what, for lack of a better term, could be called "brostep."
There's a new Sub Focus album dropping on November 21st called Contact, which includes collaborations with Grimes and Katy B. Grab your copy when it comes out. Watch this interview in full on our YouTube channel, or listen to the audio via SoundCloud, Spotify or Apple Music. -Chloe Lula
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The drum & bass veteran talks about bass music eras, dance culture in America and his new album, Contact.
British artist Nicolaas Douwma, AKA Sub Focus, has been steadily putting out big-room drum & bass since the early 2000s. In more recent years, he's become staggeringly popular, releasing a string of Top 40 UK pop hits that have made him synonymous with a more mainstream sound. His influence looms large across a whole generation of young producers, particularly in the US.
In this Exchange, Douwma sits down with Resident Advisor editor Gabe Szatan at the beautiful Red Rocks Amphitheater in Colorado. They speak about how he hit number one in the US dance music charts last year, as well as how drum & bass moved from being popular with a "secret clique of people" to becoming what, for lack of a better term, could be called "brostep."
There's a new Sub Focus album dropping on November 21st called Contact, which includes collaborations with Grimes and Katy B. Grab your copy when it comes out. Watch this interview in full on our YouTube channel, or listen to the audio via SoundCloud, Spotify or Apple Music. -Chloe Lula
Hear the word "Dionysus" and you picture the Greek god of ecstasy: overflowing tables, delirious revelry, chaos. Not the austere soundworld of Guy Brewer, AKA Carrier. On the surface, the UK artist's latest alias feels almost Spartan. But look closer and the Dionysian link starts to show: it's about shedding fixed forms and identities, to allow something more true, more alive, to form.
RA.1011 marks Brewer's third entry in the RA Mix series, following editions as drum & bass outfit Commix (RA.269) and, later, the techno alias Shifted (RA.310). "I guess it's an effort to step away from purism," Brewer told Resident Advisor back in 2023. "Right now the thresholds between genres are where you find the most exciting music."
Carrier's phenomenal debut album, Rhythm Immortal, delivers on that promise. Low-end pressure cloaks like foreboding shadows, punctured only by eerie, otherworldly percussion comparable only to Photek or T++. Listen to the LP in full and it feels like walking through a scene in a true-crime drama: a fog-drenched city street in the deep of night, ambushed by gusts of wind, whispers and strange noises—and it sounds totally, utterly original.
Tracing a line through dub pressure, fractured percussion and narcotic ambience, Brewer explores that same world on RA.1011. As with the album, there's a primal pulse that threads through the recording. Walls of negative space seem to hover before dissolving inexplicably, their tension intact; drums move more like the weather than rhythm. - Bella Aquilina
RA Podcast
The drum & bass veteran talks about bass music eras, dance culture in America and his new album, Contact.
British artist Nicolaas Douwma, AKA Sub Focus, has been steadily putting out big-room drum & bass since the early 2000s. In more recent years, he's become staggeringly popular, releasing a string of Top 40 UK pop hits that have made him synonymous with a more mainstream sound. His influence looms large across a whole generation of young producers, particularly in the US.
In this Exchange, Douwma sits down with Resident Advisor editor Gabe Szatan at the beautiful Red Rocks Amphitheater in Colorado. They speak about how he hit number one in the US dance music charts last year, as well as how drum & bass moved from being popular with a "secret clique of people" to becoming what, for lack of a better term, could be called "brostep."
There's a new Sub Focus album dropping on November 21st called Contact, which includes collaborations with Grimes and Katy B. Grab your copy when it comes out. Watch this interview in full on our YouTube channel, or listen to the audio via SoundCloud, Spotify or Apple Music. -Chloe Lula
